Image credit: SweetMellowChill on Pixabay
An island nation with a picturesque natural setting, filled with sun, sand and all manner of quirky characters - and an island nation looking to start getting into the business of making cars.
Image credit: BarbeeAnne on Pixabay
The year is 1982 1980, and El Presidente - the benevolent dictator in charge of Tropico - has decided to ramp up Tropican industry, and that includes making cars. Now, Tropico doesn’t have all that much in the way of expertise with automobiles… But surely they can find a way to make it work, right? Who is Tropico soliciting entries from? Anyone! They don’t care who provides the design, just so long as it can be made in Tropico, using Tropican, uh… “Expertise”. That can be local companies, foreign brands ready to license new or old designs, companies looking to set up local offices - anything goes!
Of course, El Presidente is a busy person, so they have told their advisors to sort through the assorted proposals for production. Each advisor will put together their own reports on the various vehicles, with the most successful ones heading forward to personal review by El Presidente. El Presidente will look at the cars holistically, but cars that do well with multiple advisors will get a boost.
Let’s meet them, get a feel for their personalities and their desires, shall we? They’ll all be original, but broadly overlapping with the various archetypes from the games.
How To Read These
Before you get into the actual descriptions, let’s briefly set out how each of these will work, shall we? Each advisor will have three things listed: High priority, nice to have and aesthetic preferences.
High priority will be the first things that an advisor looks at. Their bread and butter, what they care about most. It’s hard to do well with a specific advisor if you do poorly with their high priority stats - but, of course, you don’t have to win them all.
Nice to haves will help sway them towards your car, they’re a middle priority. They’ll help you be perceived more favourably with them. If the high priority ones are 5/5, these are generally about a 3/5.
Aesthetic preferences gives you a general guideline on what sort of designs an advisor will favour. Importantly, not all advisors want brand new designs. In fact, if no era is actively called out in an advisor’s preferences, they will generally accept any era. It’s not like there’s much competition on the island, after all.
Let me state that again: You have full license to make a car using aesthetics of the early 80s, the 70s, the 60s and even earlier than that. Heck, combine them and create a mixture of styles!
Juan Pedro, The Farmer
Juan Pedro - you know, the farmer? - lives out in the rural fringe of Tropico, where the roads are little more that dirt tracks, and the people work hard every day to harness the natural bounty of this wonderful island. If you ever need some peaches, oranges or corn, stop by his orchard and he’ll give you plenty! He once won first prize at the Tropico Agricultural Show for orange juice, if you can believe that. He’s handy with a wrench, as many other farmers are, and he appreciates cars he can repair himself. Of course, he prefers that he doesn’t have to repair things, they should just work (especially with the can of gas he’s stored out the back of his shed for a few months), but if he really has to, you know… He knows plenty about carburettors, but those fancy computer injection systems, well. those are a bit beyond him. He doesn’t trust computers anyway, not since the incident. Damn things nearly took his legs.
High priority: Offroad, reliability
Nice to have: Simpler engineering, older technologies/models, lower fuel grades, purchase price
Aesthetic preferences: Simple, no-frills designs. Sealed beams and other easily replaced parts are appreciated, but not essential.
Homero Revoluto, The Marxist
Homero Revoluto was not born with that name, of course, but he chose it when he found the light, discovered our saviour… Communism. Yes, he is also a communist agitator - not a revolutionary, of course, who would revolt against our beloved Presidente? He’s familiar with the long lines at many of the medical clinics and the tight budgets that many citizens have. Many of them cannot afford to spend time in hospital and do not now how to drive very well - but he still believes that they should be able to enjoy the cars that they have made, surely.
High priority: Purchase price, safety
Nice to have: Service costs, drivability, seat count
Aesthetic preferences: Brutalist, geometric, modern designs - viva la aesthetic revolution!
Alexander Acton, The Businessman
If Juan Pedro - you know, the farmer? - and Homero Revoluto represent Tropico’s poorest, then Alexander Acton represents Tropico’s richest. Indeed, he is Tropico’s second richest, behind only the brilliant El Presidente of course! He has a taste for the finer things in life, and he believes that Tropico’s well-off should have local products they can really be proud of and enjoy. Prestige, performance, comfort, and of course some fancy features to enjoy. He probably won’t buy one, his cars are far more expensive, but the poorer folk should.
High priority: Comfort, prestige
Nice to have: Technically advanced or otherwise fancy features, newer models
Aesthetic preferences: Expensive, premium looks - old or new, it should just show how much it costs
Kofi Willow, The Tree-Hugger
SOS! No, that’s not me you hear shouting and crying - that’s the planet! At least, it is according to Kofi Willow. Kofi Willow is Tropico’s premiere environmentalist, and a lecturer at Tropico’s premiere university - El Presidente University. It may be Tropico’s only university, but it’s the best! He’s also the leader of Tropico’s classic cars society, helping to keep old cars running to save them from the junkyard. He loves convertibles as well, to get closer to nature.
High priority: Emissions, fuel economy
Nice to have: Convertibles, low loudness
Aesthetic preferences: Older, rounder and more organic designs
Penultimo, The... Penultimo?
It’s Penultimo! The other advisors were all original, but did you really think that Penultimo would not be in this challenge? He is El Presidente’s right hand man, the Robin to their Batman, the transmission to their engine, the Penultimo to their Presidente! And after some grumpy Italian said that his car would be be better than anything Tropico could make, well, he can’t stand for that! What was the man’s name? Ferraro, Ferrini, Ferris Bueller… Something like that. So, Penultimo is convinced that Tropico should make a sports car! It doesn’t matter that many of the roads are short, it should be something fast and sporty, right?
High priority: Sportiness, top speed
Nice to have: 0-60 times, lateral G’s, braking
Aesthetic preferences: Surely something contemporary, yet sporty
But what about...
There’s a few stats I’m deliberately not including here, for various reasons:
- Load capacity, towing utility: I’m not too happy with these, so I’m not looking at them
- Practicality: Not enough levers, I think. Stuff like door count/body style might be considered though.
- Corrosion resistance: I don’t understand this enough to review it properly, so it’ll just be part of offroad
- Realism: If the game allows it, it’s mainly fair game. I might comment on especially egregious cheese, but you don’t have to worry about “what real cars would’ve used” or “what real small nations in the Carribean were doing”. Tropico is a game where an island of 2000 can support a nuclear program, just have fun with it.
Of course, there’s also some essential rules to follow, so, let’s get into those:
- This challenge will be run on the Al Rilma Open Alpha - I want to have superchargers and (in particular) the new reliability system.
- Entries must have all techpool options set to zero, to simulate Tropico’s inexperience in manufacturing. I considered negative techpool, but it turns out that negative techpool has impacts on stats and I don’t wanna deal with that.
- Entries must be named TMC - YourForumName.
- Entries should have a maximum cost of 28,000 AMU. This is a hard limit - you may be better off going cheaper. Note that this refers to the approx cost shown under the “summary” tab, in the “statistics” section - not your material cost.
- One entry per person, including collabs. Entries allowed via Discord too.
- Trim and variant year should be set to 1980, but model and family may be earlier.
- The sea air in Tropico is harsh, so all cars must use galvanised or corrosion resistant chassis.
- Fuel in Tropico is unleaded - either low quality (85 RON), regular (91 RON) or premium (95 RON). Generally, the quality gets lower the more rural you get.
- Rules discussion will be open until the 11:59PM UTC on the 27th of April.
- Submissions will close at 11:59PM UTC on the 18th of May, assuming that no updates drop in the meantime. If an update drops, I’ll extend the challenge so that it finishes on a Sunday and you have at least 2 full weeks with the new update (and I’ll allow resubs).
Changelog
- 26/04: Added realism to “But what about…”
- 26/04: Added explicit one entry per person rule
- 26/04: Added prompting about the lore side and how foreign brands might work.
- 12/05: Specified that cost refers to approx cost in the summary page, not material cost.
